Chasing The Smoke
by Aerilyn Dawnstrider
Summary: While Tally Youngblood is adventuring, Pretty Brynn Tannen and Ugly Sage Gatlen are going through their own changes as Special Circumstances attempts to destroy The Smoke. When it's gone, Tally is still causing trouble and it's up to Brynn and Sage to stop her.
1. Chapter 1: More Than Pretty

**Chapter 1: More Than Pretty**

Brynn was tired of hanging with the Crims. It wasn't that she thought she was better or too good for them—that wouldn't be very Pretty-minded—but she did think they lacked items on the Clique's To Do List. Zane was being very focused—how Ugly of him—about stupid Tally Youngblood's latest trick.

For the past two weeks, the Crims had only leaped off buildings for fun. Except for the parties, that was all the bubbly-making activity Brynn was getting. Complaining would be totally bogus, though, and she couldn't handle any more bogus.

There had to be more to life that strapping on a bungee jacket and throwing yourself off a taller building than yesterday. She looked at all the Pretty faces around her and could see that, while the Crims loved this trick, despite its Ugly origins, they were tiring of it too.

Zane motioned that it was Brynn's turn to jump, then flashed her a gorgeous smile. She went blank in the head and gave him her Prettiest smile in return. Before she took her running jump, she let her bright blue eyes roam over her leader's lips. She remembered what they felt like against her skin, and her own lips. She almost missed that, but she liked her life now enough that Zane's eventual rejection felt like a fuzzy Ugly memory. Still, the memory cleared her head again and everything became totally sharp.

_Zane pushed her away from him easily, as if she weren't trying desperately to keep kissing him. "I can't do this anymore, Brynn-la." Brynn couldn't understand this, but she couldn't find a way to ask what he meant. His expression was frighteningly intense and it silenced her anyway, even as she began to cry. "You just aren't bubbly enough and it feels bogus to be with you." It was such an ugly thing to say, but Brynn could see what he meant-her sadness was bubbly in its own way. He always seemed so bubbly that he was almost still Ugly inside._

"_I can be bubblier," she promised, clasping his hands in her own._

_He just shook his head,"Brynn, it's not you I'm looking for."_

He'd left her room right after that and Brynn hadn't responded to his pings for days. Or anyone else's.

One night, she finally pulled herself out her so-not-Pretty funk and went to a party. There were

so many Pretty boys flirting with her, and she had so much champagne, she forgot all about Zane's heartbreaking honesty and completely enjoyed the other boys' attentions. After that, everything was seemingly okay between the two of them, although everyone (at least, all the Crims) knew what had happened. Honestly, Brynn would do anything to get Zane to take her back, but it would be more than bogus to admit that or attempt to make it happen.

With that, she raced toward the edge and did a double front flip off of it, diving far from the building. She screamed, but it was fake. This hardly gave her a rush anymore, even when the jacket started working and it felt like she'd left her stomach on the ground. She bounced all the way through the first few Pleasure Gardens before finally landing in one. When her head stopped spinning—no matter how many times you jump, it's still dizzy-making, at least—she looked over at Ella, another Crim who had landed a little to her left.

She grinned like a good Pretty who'd just gotten bubbly. She wished she could feel her heartbeat in her ears. She looked at Ella's Pretty-face as she stood and brushed herself off, running a hand through her blonde locks a few times, in case the fall had thrown it everywhere. "Bubbly, right?"

Ella grinned back, "totally bubbly." Brynn didn't share the joy in Ella's expression. In fact, she hadn't really been happy for the last month.

Sure, Brynn loved being Pretty, but something about it didn't feel complete. At first, when Brynn got the surgery, she didn't think about life as an Ugly. She didn't even think about the time she nearly ran away to The Smoke. Some of her older friends had wanted to go and invited her. She'd even met David the night they were supposed to leave, but seeing his older, Ugly face, had scared her into staying. She'd gotten Pretty with two of her other friends who had also decided not to go. Now, though, after being Pretty nearly a year, she thought about the night she'd met David a lot. She couldn't quite recall what his face looked like and when she tried too hard to picture it, she got a headache.

Two weeks ago, she'd told Ella about this, when they were hanging around outside at a party. Ella had told her she was being totally bogus and to drink some more champagne. After that, Brynn decided this was something best kept to herself.

"You wanna go get ready for the party later?"

Brynn nodded, "it's probably best. How are we supposed to choose something Semi-formal to wear?"

Ella rolled her eyes and laughed, "I know, right? What does Semi-formal even mean?"

Brynn ran her hands over the soft red fabric of the dress she and Ella had finally chosen for her. The cherry color made her eyes look extra bright and the shortness of it made her legs look super long. As her and her best friend stepped out of their mansion and headed over to the party tower that was hosting the event tonight. The cool night breeze blew over Brynn's exposed shoulders.

The guys at the door grinned broadly at them and didn't stop the girls from entering the tower. Ella immediately wanted to go up to the top floor and find the Crims. Brynn wondered if it wasn't bogus in its own way that the Crims never took the time to hang out with anyone else at parties. She didn't say this, of course, but she was sure thinking it. She grabbed a flute of champagne before stepping into the elevator with Ella.

When they stepped into the middle of the crowd of Crims, Zane met Brynn's eyes and she felt a flash of déjà vu. She looked away to avoid being totally bogus, but not before she realized Zane did not have any champagne in his hand and it was clear he never had. She handed hers to Ella, who thanked her profusely and sucked it down.

For a while, Zane talked at them all about being on the lookout for new Crims, even though they all knew that anyone worthy of being a Crim would already be known to them. Then, they broke off into their own small conversations, but never drifting far from their core-Zane. O, great leader.

Speak of the devil, he sidled up to Brynn, who had been ditched by Ella for some cute blonde haired boy. She was standing near the wall, wishing she had some champagne, but refusing to drink any while Zane so obviously thought it was bogus. "What's so serious-making, Brynn-la?" This was not how Zane usually spoke; he almost always seemed more grown up than everyone else. It had once confused Brynn, then irritated her, and then inspired her.

"I have this totally gorgeous dress and no one is even appreciating how I look in it."

"Maybe that's because you look very bogus in the face." She frowned at him, in a way that made clear she hadn't asked for his opinion. He shrugged, "I think you deserve twenty milli-helens for how you look tonight, but you won't even get one if you don't smile."

She swept her eyes across the room, catching the gaze of some blonde that looked extremely interested. She wondered how she had missed this, but then she realized that she'd only really been looking for Zane's approval. Maybe she wasn't as over him as she'd thought. Pushing that aside, she smiled brilliantly at the boy, who perked up even more at her attention.

"There you go," Zane said, but he realized a second later that she wasn't smiling for him. He slunk away and the blonde came toward her. She realized when he was almost to her that this was the same guy Ella had had her eye on earlier. Brynn did a quick look around for her BFF, but she was talking to some other guy and Brynn assumed Ella had decided blondie wasn't good enough. She felt sort of guilty about going for him, but Ella didn't look upset at all, so it must be okay.

"Hey," he said, his eyes sparkling. "I'm Waverly."

"Bubbly name," she said lightly, "mine's Brynn."

"Very bubbly."

_I'm glad someone thinks I'm bubbly._ She couldn't stop herself from glancing at Zane.

"So, how long have you been a Crim?" he said, moving slightly to be in her line of vision again.

"9 months," she answered, "you?" She always hated the filler conversation that came before you became friends, or sleepover buddies, with someone. But, she put on a smile and bore it.

"A year," he shrugged, "I've seen you around with us, but I never managed to talk to you." What he really meant was _I hadn't slept with all the other girls who became Crims before you._

Their chat continued in this manner for a few more minutes and Waverly made it through four glasses of champagne before he took a step toward her, backing her against a wall. His body heat was alarmingly sweat-making, but she ignored how hot she felt and let him kiss her. Despite all the alcohol, he was not a sloppy kisser. Actually, Brynn let herself get lost in his mouth for a totally bubbly-making second before she heard Ella scoff a "seriously?"

She pulled away from Waverly, his blonde hair tickling her nose as he leaned back to give her a questioning look. Over his shoulder, Brynn could see her best friend's slightly disgusted expression. She pushed around Waverly, but he grabbed her arm. "I wasn't done," he grumbled.

"That's so not friend-making, Brynn-la." Ella pouted, but she wasn't angry. Pretties didn't get angry, after all. They didn't really fight, either. "You could have at least waited until tomorrow's party." Her smile flashed and Brynn was shocked to find that Ella's looked dead—sure, they sparkled in the Pretty way everyone's did, but she had no emotion (except innocent and a little tipsy) behind them. She truly wasn't angry or hurt. This almost made Brynn feel worse about kissing Waverly, who was still gripping her arm and trying to push her back against the wall.

She finally rounded on him and jerked her arm out of his grip. "Let **go**. Are you brain-missing or something? I'm busy."

A few people were looking at them and Brynn could read their thoughts easily. _How bogus. Why can't they just have fun?_

Her eyes found Zane. He looked disappointed. Maybe Ella wasn't mad about Waverly, but Zane thought it was totally bogus that Brynn would kiss him. He shook his head back and forth twice, then turned away from her. This stung her so sharply that she felt a rush of rage and she swiped her hands over the food table and the ice sculpture centerpiece crashed the floor, becoming icy shards that caught her and those around her in the shins, shoulders, arms, and face. As her blood trickled over her palms and into her eyes, she felt even more awake than she had in the flash of anger. She let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding, and then another, her chest heaving. Her eyes met Zane's again and this time they held both disapproval and surprise. She grinned devilishly; the feeling was strange. It felt so different from her innocent, Pretty smile. It felt wonderful and empowering.

Suddenly, he was beside her, grabbing her arm. Somehow it felt different from when Waverly had grasped her. "Whoa, Brynn-la, how much have you had to drink?" his voice was very loud and she realized, even as her head throbbed and her vision blurred, that he was trying to get her out of the party without being thinking the worst of her. "Let's get you home."

When they were in the elevator, he released her and turned to face her. "What the hell was that?"

She just stared at him.

"I misjudged you," he admitted, making Brynn's heart flutter. "I've never seen someone so…"

"Bubbly?" she offered, grinning again.

He actually chuckled. "Yes," his voice was softer now. He was so close to her and she was trying very hard to breathe normally.

The elevator opened on the bottom floor and some people nearby gasped at the sight of Brynn bleeding. Crims were used to injuries here and there, but other Pretties weren't used to seeing disarray or blood. "Stumble," Zane whispered in her ear as he hooked his arm in hers and led her out the front door. She did her best drunk act, but she didn't feel very convincing. There was whispering all around them and Brynn wondered what the rumors would be by the morning.

He led her up the stairs of Garbo mansion, stopping outside her room. She opened the door and left it open as she went inside. When he still didn't come in, she looked back over her shoulder, "aren't you going to make sure I get tucked in safely?" The left side of her mouth lifted as she turned away again.

Hesitantly, Zane stepped over the threshold, then asked the hole in the wall for some water and a washcloth. When these were produced, he made Brynn sit on the bed and he dipped the cloth in the water and dabbed the blood off her face for her before handing the washcloth to clean the rest of her.

As she wiped the blood off her arms and legs, she glanced up at Zane from her bent position to clean her shins. She knew very well that from where he was standing, her breasts were more than dangerous cleavage. He swallowed visibly as she smirked up at him. She stood and put the washcloth and water into the recycling. "You seem nervous." That didn't happen often and Brynn was glad to see he was capable of being normal and not so intense and weird all the time.

"I feel as though I may do something I regret."

"We don't regret anything," she said, but she didn't really sound like she meant it. Still, she gave him a one shoulder shrug. "Why don't you try what it is you're thinking and decide later if it's regret worthy?"

He stood still a moment longer, then reached behind her and wrapped his hand around her neck. He held her gaze for a millisecond before he pulled her into him, his mouth covering hers. She let out a sound of approval and felt him smile against her mouth. She let him kiss her a little longer, then pulled away and nodded her head toward the door, which was still ajar.

"Shut the door," she whispered.

"Okay," his voice was husky.

By the time he'd shut the door and turned back to face her, her pretty red dress was on the floor. He grinned at her, making her heart, which was already racing, beat faster, and then he laid her gently on the bed, kissing her neck and letting his hand slide up her naked leg.

* * *

With a big puff of breath, Sage managed to get the heavy piece of railroad track off his shoulder and onto his hoverboard. He'd been in The Smoke for three and a half years now, but the large metal tracks didn't get any lighter. He could hear someone else pulling up track quite a distance away, but the sound didn't even bother him anymore.

"I think we can go back now," Charlotte said, stepping onto her hoverboard, wobbling dangerously for a second. Sage followed her lead, more gracefully, but said nothing. He didn't particularly care for working with Charlotte. She complained most of the time and always asked him to help her while batting her giant eyelashes. She was Pretty, actually. One of her Ugly friends had broken her out of New Pretty Town and brought her along to The Smoke. This had caused quite a ruckus, but it was obvious pretty quickly that Charlotte had more or less agreed to come along. Usually, she was annoying and useless, but sometimes she had strange moments of clarity. Sage had noticed that in the two months she'd been here those moments were becoming more frequent. She was still generally insufferable.

When they returned to camp, everyone was heading into the Mess Hall for lunch. Sage slid the track off his hoverboard quickly onto the pile of twisted metal others had pulled up before powering down his crash bracelets and stepping into the building, leaving Charlotte to struggle with her own piece of track.

After grabbing his tray, he sat down beside Croy, who was sitting across from Ryde and Asterix. "Hey, how was Pretty-face today?"

"Same as always," he bit into his roll. "I wish The Boss would put me with someone else."

"Like who? Shay?" He nodded across the mess hall, to a girl with pigtails that were falling out a little. She was walking next to David and smiling so wide it hurt Sage's cheeks to look at it.

"Uhm, no," Sage said, frowning, "she's obviously with David."

Croy nodded. "He always gets the cute ones."

This was something that Sage had only recently been able to wrap his head around. People who'd been in The Smoke awhile didn't see Ugly faces anymore. They just saw people's faces and could decide whether those faces were attractive or not. Sage looked over at Shay again. Was she really cute or did she just seem interesting because she had only showed up two days ago?

"Hey, guys," David settled beside Ryde and Shay sat very close to him. "How did your morning go?"

"We got a couple of trees down today," Asterix said around a huge bite of Spagbol.

"Good," David nodded, "how's the track coming up?" He asked, turning to Sage, who shrugged.

"It's coming up," he said plainly.

The conversation lulled as they all ate. Then Shay and David were talking about how she liked it here.

"I can't wait for Tally to see all this," she looked around at all of them, "and to meet all of you. You'll love her."

Croy frowned, "I don't think she's coming."

Shay mirrored his expression. "You don't even know her."

"If she were coming, she would have been right behind you. You've been here a couple days now."

"Well, maybe the Rangers just haven't picked her up yet. Maybe she's just waiting out in that field for someone to find her."

No one said anything to that, because no one believed that Shay's little friend was coming.

* * *

It had been a whole day since she and Zane had gotten back together. They'd spent a lot of the night after her freak-out at the party and much of the next morning in her room. When they'd left Brynn's room to go to lunch, they'd had a nice little lunch in the Pleasure Garden just across from Garbo.

He'd talked about getting bubbly just from kissing her, which was good because they'd both become decidedly calm after all their time in her bed. It had been like a constant battle to hold on to clarity as his lips touched hers, only to lose it when his fingers tickled her hip.

The cool air had helped her feel more aware, but she was going to need a lot more kisses and maybe a jump off the roof to be totally clear. She didn't say that though, as they ate their fruit.

Since there was no mishap at the party the next night, Zane had no excuse for going home with Brynn. He kissed her, leaving her feeling both dizzy and awake, and said he'd see her tomorrow. Without any champagne in her system and no Zane to distract her, she took in the night with a new sense of appreciation for it.

This was lost a moment later when a scary-looking woman stepped in her path. Brynn stopped dead, but she was clear-headed enough not to freak out. "Hello, Brynn," the woman's voice hurt her ears.

"Do we, like, know each other?"

"You don't know me, yet, but I know you. My name is Dr. Cable."

"Oh my gosh, you're a Special Circumstances agent!"

Dr. Cable chuckled. "I'm the head of Special Circumstances, Brynn. I applaud you for recognizing that."

"There's all kind of rumors, but I was never sure you guys were real."

"We're very real," Dr. Cable promised, her tone making Brynn shiver, "and we would like you to join us."

"Whoa. What?"

"You see, we have a Special Circumstance coming up soon and we'll need as many Specials as we can get. Usually I would wait another year or so to approach you, but I don't think you'll miss being Pretty as much as some of the others would."

"Dr. Cable, right? You're, like, losing me."

"Ah. You're reverting to that horrible bubble-headed talk."

"What?"

She shook her head, "come," she commanded, "my hovercar is on the other side of these bushes. I can get you an appointment for surgery in a few hours."

"I never agreed to being one of you."

"Sure you did. I know about your little tantrum at the party two nights ago. That was very impressive."

"Listen, Doctor. I don't think throwing some ice on the floor is really all that special."

She nodded, "maybe not, but what is special is that you brought yourself to the point where you could throw that sculpture on the floor and really mean it."

Brynn sighed, "you're making me very tired."

She motioned for Brynn to follow her. "If you come with me, you'll be asleep very soon."

"It's not real sleep if you knock me out."

"Hm," was all Dr. Cable said as she stepped through the bushes and up into her hovercar. She looked down expectantly at Brynn.

"I don't really have a choice, do I?"

"You always have a choice."

She glanced back at the party tower, with its flashing lights. The only feeling she really had when she looked at it was that Zane was inside and she would be leaving him behind.


	2. Chapter 2: Tally

**Chapter 2: Tally**

Her reflection was shocking. Even though she'd been Special for four days, Brynn still enjoyed looking at herself in her wall screen, which was even fancier than the one's she'd had as both an Ugly and a Pretty. Her new room was relatively plain, but she didn't mind. Who needed fancy decorations and crazy colors? This was practical.

Her black eyes seemed to blend in with the blankness of the wall screen, which she had turned off, and her smile made her think about wild animals must have looked like in the Rusty time when they found prey.

She blinked down at her interface ring when she got a ping.

_Tally Youngblood has just left for The Smoke, report to H floor, room 21._

This was the first time she'd gotten a ping since turning Special. She recalled the large number of pings she'd gotten the evening she'd woken up a Special. Specials generally slept during the day, it turned out, and got up in the late afternoon. All her pings had been from people she'd expected to get them from, each more annoying than the next.

**Ella: **_Great party last night, right? Meet you for lunch!_

**Zane: **_Brynn, I just went to your room and you weren't there. Where are you?_

**Ella: **_Brynn-la, where were you for lunch? It's totally bogus that you ditched me. I'm really not mad about Waverly, silly-head. It's been, like, a year since then anyway. Aren't you and Zane-la hooking up again?_

**Zane: **_I'm worried. Please ping me._

**Zane: **_Brynn, please._

**Zane: **_Brynn!_

**Zane: **_Are you alright?_

**Ella: **_Why are you ignoring me?_

**Zane: **_Please tell me that you're okay when you can. I love you._

This last one was most upsetting. He had never said those words before and when he finally had, they had felt stupid and hollow. When she thought of Zane now, she mostly thought of a random. Sure, sometimes she felt something within her that was almost despair, but mostly she felt glad to be free of his requirements. She no longer had to worry about being 'bubbly' enough for him, or not drinking champagne in order to look cool. Of course, the idea of champagne was not pleasant. Why had she ever drunk that stuff? She'd been so young and naïve!

She took the elevator to floor H. Another Special joined her two floors from her destination and turned out to be going to the same place. He introduced himself as Blaize. They sat beside each other in the conference room. There were at least twenty other Specials there for the meeting, ranging from Brynn's age to older than Dr. Cable, who was standing at the front of the room.

"Alright. Let's begin," the woman's voice no longer sounded so painful to Brynn. It was still razor sharp, but now it just made Brynn focus on Dr. Cable's words more clearly. "Tally Youngblood, as you all know, is our chance to find The Smoke and take it down. Just ten minutes ago, she was given a hoverboard better than those that Uglies requisite, in order to make up for the time she spent being difficult, as well as a backpack of supplies she will need for her trip through the wild. I expect it to take her four to five days to reach The Smoke, at which point she will set off the pendant tracker I have given her."

"Four to five days?" Brynn asked, "if we don't know where The Smoke is, how do you know how long it will take for Tally to get there?"

"Her friend, Shay, the reason we know Tally can find The Smoke, told her she had four weeks' worth of food, but that if Tally went with her, they would each have two weeks. She also said that it wouldn't take nearly that long to get there. Anyway," she turned away from Brynn, "when Tally gives us her location, we can make it there in a few hours." Brynn had seen the all-terrain hovercars the Specials had. Apparently, they used them to try to find Uglies who were attempting to make it to The Smoke. "After that, capture the Smokies and burn the whole place down. We'll return all the Smokies to their home cities." She produced two eye readers. "Who would like to be in charge of rounding up the little Smokies?"

The meeting continued in this manner for another ten minutes. Brynn, Rip—Brynn's fighting instructor—and a woman near Dr. Cable who Brynn recalled was named Blair were assigned to separating them by city and Blaize was given the task of burning the buildings after they were emptied.

"Anything else?" Dr. Cable asked the room at large, though it was clear she wasn't really expecting anyone to say something.

"I have an idea," Brynn offered. When everyone just looked at her, she presented it. "Why don't we watch them in the morning and wait for most of them to be eating breakfast. It's likely they all eat together and it would be much easier not to miss someone if they're all in one place."

Silence.

Then: "That's not a poor idea. We'll do it."

How long was Shay going to go on about this Tally girl? It had been six days since she'd arrived and Sage had had enough of Shay's prattling, but David was always so patient and nice about her obsession. As it turned out, Shay hadn't known Tally that long before she came out here and she'd left instructions for her friend, which she wasn't supposed to do.

Sage had decided Shay was kinda stupid (it probably didn't help that she was just freshly sixteen) even if she was cute. Then again, maybe if he'd had a friend he would really miss, he would have left him or her with a way out here too.

He sighed as stood up from the table. Breakfast was more or less over and Smokies were heading out to do their daily tasks. Finally, Sage had been placed with Croy cutting up the trees for firewood. They worked diligently and with little conversation until lunch, and then they had the evening off, so Sage returned to his bunk for a nap.

On the eleventh day of Shay, Sage and Croy skipped sitting in the mess hall for lunch altogether. They grabbed their food and sat outside, scarfing down their food before getting back to work.

Around nine, as everyone was settling down around the campfire, they heard the sound of a helicopter in the distance. Surprised, Sage looked over at Croy. "New Smokies."

"I told you!" Shay cried, "that must be Tally!"

"She's taken too long," Sage frowned, "it can't be her. It has to be someone else."

"We'll go in the morning and see," David promised.

Just before the sun broke the horizon, David, Shay, Sage, Croy, and a couple other Smokies went to the hill. It wasn't long before it came into sight and a lone figure sat atop it. She leaped up as the group came into view. Shay's face split into a wide grin as the silhouette became a girl with brown hair and a dirty face. "It is you!" She tore off up the hill, her pigtails bobbing, as the girl nearly threw herself down it.

Sage couldn't believe it. Tally was really here. How had she made it alone, and why was she so late? Suddenly, he felt rude for not believing Shay. Clearly, she'd had faith in her friend and Tally had pulled through. The new girl told Shay she'd left the night of her birthday and had had a bit of trouble with the note. Shay immediately got pouty, so Tally withdrew her statement and blamed herself instead, also attributing her lateness to the fact that the Rangers had nearly fried her in the white flowers. Sage could believe that, by the look of her.

When they got back to camp, Shay immediately dragged Tally off to who-knows-what and the rest of them went back to work.

"Something's weird," Croy grumbled a bit later. "She couldn't have been in the flowers that long. The Rangers go through there all the time. I really doubt she almost got toasted twice."

"Maybe she didn't catch them the first time, but she learned to stay out in the open for the next time they came around."

"How did she know they should see her?"

"Shay gave her a note, I'm sure it said something about the Rangers picking her up."

Croy still didn't seem convinced, but Sage didn't really feel like figuring out if Tally had legitimately taken longer than she'd meant to, or if something was off.


	3. Chapter 3: Invasion

**Chapter 3: Invasion**

A week and a half Tally had been here, and boy, was she wonderful. She was nice enough, smart enough, and she did good work. Of course, David had taken a liking to her, leaving Shay in the dust. Sometimes, he could be heard talking about how different Tally was from the others who came—how she already understood the real meaning of the Smoke. Sage thought this was a load of shit. Croy had too, for a while, but Tally had worked with them one day and Croy had confronted her on her confusing delay. She'd nearly convinced him that there was nothing weird going on and that she'd just waited until literally the last second. Sage could almost imagine her leaving just before dawn broke the day of her birthday and rushing to get here before the Smokies thought the worst of her.

She'd said that she'd left the night before, but she must have been confused about the time. Even if she did have to wait for the Rangers a second time, that still left nearly a day unaccounted for. Unless some other horrible event had befallen her that she hadn't shared around the campfire, which seemed unlikely, she had to have left later than she'd thought she had.

The more Sage thought about it, the more it didn't make sense. He tried to talk to Croy about it one night, before lights out, but his friend had put his suspicion in Tally behind him.

"Hey, if she was going to betray us, wouldn't she have done it by now? If she didn't really want to be here, then why did she just spend the last week working her ass off?"

Sage had no argument for that, but he couldn't push his unease aside.

"Sage?"

He blinked awake, though he was surprised to find it still extremely dark in the bunk. "Huh? What Croy?"

There was a slight giggle, "it's Shay, actually."

Sage sat up, rubbing his eyes. Since David had chosen Tally over her, Shay had been very clingy with Sage and Croy, always asking to work with them or eat with them. The boys didn't normally mind, despite her slightly annoying personality. Really, she hadn't been so bad since Tally showed up. First, she'd been ecstatic to have her friend and she'd stopped the _Tally's totally coming, you guys_. Then, when it was clear she and David were no longer a thing, she set out to find another **thing** and had become a bit more sour. Sage and Croy had happily accepted her attention, since she was cute, but it had gotten to the point where they weren't sure her pigtails and smile were worth it.

Now, though, Sage wasn't sure what to think. It wasn't often girls came into your bunk, especially in the middle of the night, and when they did it usually meant one thing. He grinned at her, one side of her face reflected in the moonlight. This side of her face was much more ferocious than the Shay he'd gotten used to when he looked at her entire face. He knew instantly that if she'd turned Pretty, that side of her would have been eradicated. It was way too serious and scary for that side of the river.

"What is it, Shay? Is everything alright?"

"I can't sleep," she sounded very pouty about it.

"How can I help?" he had an idea where this was going.

"Could you maybe come on a walk with me?"

This, he hadn't expected. "Oh, erm, sure." He slid around so that his legs hung over his bed, which happened to be a floor bed. Croy was lightly snoring above him and the other two guys they shared the small building with were fast asleep as well. "Let me just get my shoes."

As they exited the bunk, Sage whispered to Shay, "does walking usually help you sleep?"

"No," Shay threw him a grin that confused him a great deal.

"Then why are we doing it! It's cold and—"

Shay put a finger on his lips, stepping very close to him at the same time. "Shh," her body heat and the expression on her face stirred Sage and he closed his lips, his eyes twinkling down at her.

She grinned again and took his hand, leading him out of the 'city' and into the thick wall of trees behind the bunk buildings. As soon as they breached the first line of oaks, Shay turned around and wrapped her arms around his neck, kissing him with a force he hadn't expected. His back pressed against a tree and he wrapped his arms around her waist, in turn.

For a moment, they kissed each other as though they had done so a million times. Then, she reached for the string of his night pants and he reached for the hem of her sleep shirt. He pulled up as she put her arms in the air long enough for him to do so. Then she dropped down so she could remove his pants.

When they were both entirely naked, Shay let him look over her, her skin seeming to shine in the light from the moon coming through the treetops. When they came together, it occurred to Sage that he was a rebound. She felt so good, though, he couldn't bring himself to care.

For nearly two weeks that stupid little Ugly had kept them waiting.

"Maybe she died," someone at the table suggested during the meeting Dr. Cable had called about their predicament.

"The tracker would have been set off if it had been damaged."

"What if it wasn't damaged?"

Dr. Cable frowned, something none of the Specials liked to see her do. "I have complete faith in Tally to succeed in her mission. She wanted too badly to be Pretty to let a little thing like death get her."

Brynn hadn't known Tally Youngblood, but even as a Pretty, she hadn't much liked the idea of the squashed-nose girl. She seemed like nothing but trouble (and not the fun kind).

"Well, we—"

"Doctor?" a woman bustled into the room without knocking. Dr. Cable frowned again and everyone tensed. "We've got the location."

Suddenly, everything was a flurry of motion.

Before Brynn knew it, she was in a very loud hovercar, flying across the wild toward the Smoke.

The next morning, Sage woke up later than usual, what with his late night excursion and all. Croy was already dressed and prepared to go to breakfast, so Sage quickly clad himself and didn't have time to tell his friend about what had happened.

As they sat down with their food, Sage finally felt like they had enough privacy, as they were the only ones at the table. "You're never going to guess what happened to me last—"

"Hey guys," Shay's voice jingled as she sat down beside Sage. "How's your morning so far?" She didn't look at Sage, though he had been expecting a knowing smile.

"Fine. Sleepy-head over here nearly made us late for breakfast."

Shay giggled, but before anyone could say anything else there was a terrible ruckus outside. A number of people rushed to the doors of the mess hall and looked up, only to find giant hovercrafts, with helicopter blades on their bottom, landing around the Smoke. There was a great deal of shouts then and Sage saw Shay's face fall.

"Tally," she murmured.

"What?" Sage frowned, unsure what to pay attention to—the Specials outside or Shay's accusation.

"Tally did this."

"How do you know?" asked Croy, even as he stood and looked for a way out other than the front door, where Specials were already grabbing the kids who'd gone to look outside.

"I just have a feeling. She came here, even though she didn't want to at all when I left, she had that locket and said her new boyfriend gave it to her, but then she takes David from me."

"That seems like quite a leap. Anyway, I would love to stand here and discuss this with you, but maybe we should run," Croy shouted over the blades outside and the screams of the Smokies. He heard a crackle and a thump somewhere not too far off and he knew from experience that it was the sound of something on fire falling in on itself.

Suddenly, a Special was standing before them. She was hardly older than Shay, though her black eyes were much more sinister and womanly than her figure suggested. Still her muscles bulged as large as Sage and Croy's and her teeth, exposed due to her evil grin, were sharper than many of their tools. He was immediately afraid of her, despite himself.

"Come on, little Smokies. Play time's over," she grabbed Sage and Shay by the arm, her partner, a hulking man with a giant scar down the side of his face, snatched Croy, who protested. "Time to go home."

"I am home!" cried Shay, striking out at the Special. The woman immediately retaliated, twisting Shay around by her arm with one hand and handcuffing her wrists before Sage could even consider taking advantage of the distraction and run away.

"We don't want to hurt you," the man said, "but we will if we have to."

He and the girl exchanged slight grins that suggested the former of his statement was not the case at all.

The three of them were deposited in the old animal pens, where another man took them. As he was being transferred between Specials, Sage swung out with his leg, trying to knock the man over. He succeeded in making the man stumble, but the woman held tightly to him, throwing him down on the ground, making him eat dirt, as she handcuffed him as well.

Croy tried a similar tactic and the three of them ended up in a section of the pen made specifically for the Smokies who had acted out upon capture. Not long after that, Tally was thrown in with them. She looked rumpled and was without shoes.

"I knew it wasn't you!" Croy said.

Tally turned to look at them, but she was met with a near-glare from Shay. The brown-haired girl frowned at the girl who had been her friend, the reason she had come here to the Smoke. Sage almost felt bad for her.

Brynn had finally rounded up all the Smokies she could find. She returned to the pens with Rip and Blair to scan the captured and start the sorting. A few times she had to make the Smokies sit still so that she could get a proper scan.

When they got to the Troublemaker section, Brynn recognized a few faces from the mess hall. She was a bit more violent with them, grabbing their faces harder than necessary and letting her plastic nails scratch them.

"Hey," Rip said from beside her as she scanned Sage Gatlen, who turned out to be from their city, as were the other boy and girl who'd been with him. "It's her."

She looked over at a plain girl who looked more than a little dirty. The girl's face fell and she went very white.

For the first time, Brynn looked into the face of Tally Youngblood.


	4. Chapter 4: Prison Break

**Chapter 4: Prison Break**

It had been a few days since they had brought down The Smoke and returned all the Smokies to their rightful cities. Brynn had been assigned, with Rip and Blaize, to monitoring the prisoners. They had not been reentered into the city because Dr. Cable had insisted they be forced to wait for their surgeries. Most of them should have been Pretties a while ago and some of them were very close to being middle-pretty age. This was astonishing to Brynn, that people would stay out in the wild for that long and let themselves stay Ugly forever.

Many of them were more than hard to look at. She recalled an old man that had been killed. Blair had called it in, saying he'd fought as hard as an old Ugly could. Brynn didn't suppose that was too hard. Shay had been one of the first turned, even though she was one of the youngest. Dr. Cable had demanded it because Shay had caused a lot of trouble the whole way back to the city and she'd wanted the girl shut up. Now, Shay was a smiling, idiotic Pretty. Brynn knew how it worked, now that she was above all of that brain-working shit. Dr. Cable had explained after Brynn's Special operation, and it seemed to make all the sense in the world.

Even though she was Pretty, Shay was still annoying. She just found new ways. She lived in New Pretty Town, but Dr. Cable asked her to hang around chatting with the other Smokies, who seemed disgusted and terrified by this new Shay.

Brynn was amused enough by the unease she set in the Smokies that Shay's exasperating bubbliness was bearable.

Brynn was not amused that Tally Youngblood had managed to escape—Rip had been seriously reprimanded for allowing that to happen—and she was not amused that David had not been captured at all. Of course, his father had been taken out of the equation, when Dr. Cable had demanded the doctors eradicate any knowledge of the Pretty operation brain-messing from his mind. David was sure to come looking for revenge about that, and they could bag him then.

When she woke up early in the evening, she was met with a few pings.

**Dr. Cable: **_Planning operation for a few more Smokies tonight. Here's the list, round them up._

**Zane: **_I can see that you won't be pinging me anymore. It would have been nice if you could have at least told me you weren't dead._

Brynn vaguely wondered if she should have told Zane about her operation. Would he think it was bubbly or would he think it was awful? She decided she didn't care. Let him think she died, or ran off to the Smoke. He'd talked about it before, and so had she. It was plausible, at least.

She laughed as she climbed out of bed and dressed in her silver suit. The Smoke. The Smoke was dead, thanks to her and the other Specials. She checked her list of Smokies to bring in for the doctors.

_Ryde Sanders_

_ Astrix Boyne_

_ Sage Gatlen_

"They changed your face," Sage frowned. He reached out to touch her cheek, but Shay moved backward with a cutely wrinkled nose.

"Of _course _they did, silly. What's the point of becoming Pretty if they make you keep your Ugly face."

"You weren't ugly," Sage promised. "That night you came in to my bunk, the moon was shining on one side of your face and you looked like a completely different person. It was amazing. Now, that part of you is gone."

"Good," Shay said, obviously upset. "Why would I want to look completely different depending on the light? I want to be beautiful all the time."

Sage could tell this was a dead-end conversation.

"I should go," Shay said, standing up. "I have other things to do, you know, besides try to talk you into cooperating with the Specials. I left a party to be here!"

Sage didn't reply. He knew that no matter what he said, Shay would refute it with a silly reason that she seemed intent on making him believe was legitimate.

She left then, but just a few moments later, there was the terrible sound of screeching metal. Sage peered through the small window of his cell and saw David ripping up the doors. Maddy appeared through the tear. Sage felt his heart leap. David was here to rescue them!

Suddenly, there was the sound of another powerjack pulling metal to his right. After a moment, David was in front of his door. He moved back as the giant tool made a space just big enough for him to crawl through. He forced his way out of the cell, finding Tally in the middle of freeing Croy.

As Brynn opened her door to fetch the Smokies, an alarm sounded. In her ear, an urgent ping: _Security breach. Hoverboards on the compound. Prisoners escaped._

She bolted up the stairs, not bothering to try the elevator. She was going to get Tally Youngblood, and David if she could. They wouldn't slip away this time, and there was no way in hell she was going to let all those Smokies go free again.

She ran into a number of Specials also on their way outside. They burst outside, finding Tally still waiting for the hoverboards to reach her. Brynn made it to Tally first, but the Ugly was already rising into the air. She jumped up after her, her fingers just brushing the front end of the boards. As she landed on the ground, Brynn and the others stood looking up, waiting for Tally to fall. How could she ride four boards at once when they were all wobbling? Somehow, though, the little bitch managed it and she went out of sight onto the roof. The prisoners must be up there.

_Nano glue in elevator and hovercar launch, _came a ping.

"We have Specials out right now. Three hovercars, at least." Blaize said.

"Bring them in quickly."

The bottom of the hoverboards came into view again and they zoomed away from the headquarters.

"Why don't we just send them out?"

"This is a job for us."

Blaize sighed, but called in the hovercars.

After a moment, they appeared over the hill and landed in the grass in front of them. "We had a few Uglies in New Pretty Town," said a Special as she stepped out of the hovercar.

"We've got a ton of them heading out of the city," Rip growled. "All the Smokies have escaped."

"What?"

"Not now," Brynn growled, pushing the Special out of the way and climbing into the hovercar. "Let's go."

"They gave the message, _The Smoke Lives_," the Special offered, her expression dark.

Rip jumped into the hovercar with Brynn, while Blaize and Blair hopped into another, and two more Specials took the last. Brynn lifted off immediately, zooming toward the greenbelt, the new information more motivation. Rip booted up the prisoner tracking system in the hovercar. There were a number of green dots flashing on the screen. They were all going in different directions. As they watched, one seemed to turn and go faster in the opposite direction, back toward the city. Rip frowned, "that's weird."

As they made it to the greenbelt, Brynn swore nastily. There were a huge number of Uglies boarding around on the greenbelt.

"What the hell?"

"Damn Uglies. Tally Youngblood's got many friends in the city too, it seems."

"Should we round them all up? They're out after hours and they're trying to mess with us."

"I want Tally and David."

Rip was silent, though he could feel Brynn's irritation rising as she had to continuously maneuver around Uglies. They finally made it to the tracker that had turned back. It was over the river. Whoever it was flew right under them. Brynn turned the hovercar, but all that she saw was the river below.

"Look," Rip pointed. Floating below the surface of the water, stuck in the current, was a strip of orange cloth.

"Damn it!" Brynn shouted, pounding the steering wheel with her fist. She grabbed her walkie talkie and snarled into it. "Don't bother tracking them, they've cut their trackers and dropped them."

"Wait, look." Up ahead, two boys were riding double. One of them was still clutching a strip of orange cloth in his fist.

She pressed the hovercar forward to its top speed. The boy in the back turned at the sound and patted his partner on the shoulder. Brynn was glad to see his fear. With both of them on the board, the hovercar easily caught up to them. Rip leaned out of the hovercar, trying to grab the boy on the back of the board.

"Don't come back for me," Brynn heard the boy say, even though his mouth was close to the other's ear.

The first boy turned back slightly to look at him. "What?" He urged the board to go faster, but it only whined a little and maintained speed. "No, we can outrun them."

"We can't." The boy in the back dropped off the board just as Rip swiped at him. He tumbled onto the grass and the board lurched forward. The lost weight allowed the board to surge ahead of the hovercar. Brynn didn't follow him, he wasn't David. Rip made her stop the hovercar, though, to get the boy who had jumped.

His landing had hardly been soft and he looked like he'd been hurt. He stopped one of the Uglies flying around, who gave him her hoverboard after a moment. Brynn raced after him, leaping out of the hovercar. She made it to him just as he started picking up speed. She jumped up onto the board behind him and wrapped her arms around his weight. "Mind if I catch a ride?"

He tried to push her off with his elbow, but she held tight. "Get off me," he growled.

He was older than a lot of the others. He must have been in The Smoke for a long time. She could feel his muscles, tight and hard beneath his orange jumpsuit. "Sorry, Smokey," she said, not sounding sorry at all, "but I can't do that. Stop the board. I don't want to hurt you, but I will if I have to."

He spun, then, hurling her off the board, but she held on tight and he went tumbling down after her. She let go only when they stopped rolling, and stood up.

Rip came up beside them, having gone back for the hovercar. "Get in," he said to the boy.

"No."

"Hey," Brynn grabbed his arm. He turned to look at her, recognition in his eyes. "Get in," she gritted her teeth. "What's your name, anyway, Ugly?"

"You'll have to drag me into this hovercar unconscious," he tried to twist out of her grip, but she tightened her hand until he cried out and stopped struggling. She shoved him against the hovercar, his cheekbone making contact with the hard surface. He groaned in pain and she pushed him up into the car, then climbed in.

Rip pressed the button to bring the plastic roof over the top of the hovercar, so that the boy couldn't jump out.

"Sage," the Ugly said after a minute, as they zoomed out of the city, looking for more escapees.

"What?" Rip asked, turning to look at their captured Ugly in the backseat.

"She asked for my name. I'm Sage. Sage Gatlen."


	5. Chapter 5:Partner Against Crime

**Chapter Five: Partner Against Crime**

Brynn had done all she could to follow the boy who had been with Sage, but they had taken too long to collect the brown-haired boy. When they had caught up with his tracker outside of the city, he had already dropped it and disappeared. She had driven around for another half an hour, looking for wherever the Smokies might be hiding, but she had found nothing that gave away their location.

Infuriated, she had returned to Special Circumstances Headquarters in a real mood. The only that made her feel better was that her attitude seemed to honestly be frightening Sage. She was glad he finally had some sense.

The nanoglue had been removed and they could enter the building like normal. When she tore him out of the hovercar, Dr. Cable chuckled. "Careful now, Brynn. We wouldn't want to hurt our little Smokey."

"I will if I have to," Brynn frowned, her fingernails digging into Sage's arm. He didn't cry out, but his face betrayed the pain he felt from it.

He looked around him, obviously trying to find a way to get away from them and out of the compound again. Brynn couldn't imagine how he thought he would succeed in this.

"Don't bother," Dr. Cable said to him. "There are too many of us and you wouldn't know your way around the building well enough to evade us even if you did manage to get passed all of us."

He said nothing, but he quit looking around.

"What shall we do with him?" Rip asked.

"Tally won't come back for just one," Dr. Cable said, clearly unhappy with that. "Her self-preservation won't allow it. I'm honestly surprised she came for you at all," the woman's black eyes fell on Sage.

His green ones glared back. "Of course she did. Her and David—"

Dr. Cable laughed. "David. Little, Ugly David. That poor boy; she hasn't told him." She addressed the room at large, her arms spread out and a sharp laugh on her lips, "she hasn't told him."

All the Specials laughed. There were at least twelve of them in the room. The cacophony of their amusement sounded like a million hoverboards running into each other. Sage flinched, his body coming into contact with Brynn, who still held him tightly. She was warm, to his surprise. He had expected her skin to be cold and hard, but if felt much like his.

She snarled down at him, but the snarl held more laughter. "Scared, Ugly?"

"No."

"Sure you are," Dr. Cable said. "You should be. But, Mr…"

"Gatlen," Brynn offered, when Sage said nothing.

"Mr. Gatlen, wait until you hear the story of your friend, Tally Youngblood."

Sage couldn't believe it. Tally had come to sell them out. He had been right, Croy had been right, _Shay _had been right. Shay, who was now Pretty, and not at all like she had been before. Seeing her like that had given Sage a horrible feeling about the operation. He didn't want to go through with it himself, if it meant losing who he was. He could deal with a new face, he supposed, but not a new mindset.

David must not know, or else he wouldn't have brought Tally along to rescue them. Plus, they had still seemed to be together. How cruel could she be, lying to all of them and then, when everything had literally gone up in smoke, she had continued to lie to David. Why? So that he wouldn't dump her? If she really wanted to be pretty so badly, why had she run back into the wild, taking Shay with her?

Sage couldn't make sense of it, but he was sure Tally would show her true colors eventually and end up in New Pretty Town. He wondered if he would be there too, partying alongside the traitor. He wondered if he would be mad at her for what she'd done or if they would drink champagne together and maybe go home together. He shivered at the thought, he didn't want that. He didn't want to be friends with Tally and he certainly didn't want to touch her.

He swallowed, thinking of his and Shay's encounter the night before the invasion. Her skin, so smooth and shiny; her touch, so soft and needy…he shook himself. There was no point thinking about it now. Even if he became Pretty with Shay, he doubted things would be like they had been in The Smoke.

It had been five days since he had been busted out of Special Circumstances, only to be caught again and brought back. He'd gotten food, a wallscreen to watch television on, and Dr. Cable had come to see him once, to talk to him about The Smoke and Tally. He didn't know how long they would keep him here, but he hoped they would get on with whatever it was they were going to do. Anything would be better than sitting in his cell, thinking of all the horrible things that might befall him.

He had never heard of anyone being killed, but he supposed that didn't mean much. Still, he figured they would have done so already if they were going to. And if they wanted the Smokies dead, why did they bother sending them home, instead of just burning them all with the buildings?

He looked up when he heard a clicking sound, like a speaker being turned on. Then, a sharp, Special voice filled the room, though Sage couldn't tell where it was coming from or who it was.

"You are being prepared for surgery." There was a soft hissing sound and all of the sudden Sage didn't feel like he was breathing in air. His vision blurred after a moment and he swayed where he sat on his bed. "Relax, and when you wake up, everything will be just fine."

He doubted that, but he couldn't fight the airborne drug that was putting him to sleep. Blackness seeped across his eyes and he lost sight of the room. He could still hear the soft hissing, but his breathing seemed easier until he wasn't aware of anything at all.

"Brynn," Dr. Cable smiled as the young Special came into the meeting room. She was surprised to find herself the only one there.

"Is there something you need me for?" Brynn couldn't imagine doing something all on her own. Even when Uglies were just playing tricks, they sent at least two people.

"I called you here because I think it is time that you had a proper partner."

"Oh," this, she had not expected. She had worked with Rip quite a bit and had assumed they were partners.

"I'm sure you remember the man you captured the night the Smokies escaped."

"Yes," Brynn frowned now, not sure where this was going. It had been nearly two weeks since then. They still had been unable to find anyone, which was wearing thin on everyone at H.Q.

"Well," the doctor continued, "he was a bit too old to be a New Pretty, you know. People would ask questions. Plus, he's very strong, and it was a worry that the conditioning might not be enough to stop him from speaking with others about his endeavors."

"And we can't have that."

"Indeed. So," she clapped her hands, "we have made him especially for you."

The door opened behind Brynn and she spun around quickly. A man similar to Sage stood there, looking at her. His hair was a shade darker brown and his eyes were now a deep green, with flecks of golden brown around the large black pupils. His face had been sharpened, so his hard jawline had disappeared and his cheeks were more prominent.

She blinked at him and turned to Dr. Cable. "Did you mean to make him so handsome?" she grinned.

The Doctor's black eyes flickered as a smirk rose to her lips. "He was fit to be handsome and that's all there is to it. You just couldn't see it before, because he was—"

"Random," Brynn finished.

Dr. Cable nodded, "well, go. Get to know each other. Rip has been training him, so feel free to spar."

Brynn thought that was a good idea. That way, they would know how the other fought and could learn to work together against the Smokies. And regular Uglies, Brynn reminded herself. She sometimes forgot that her job was more than just catching runaways and friends of Tally Youngblood.

They exited the room, the doors shutting behind them. "Well," she said, looking Sage over again. "I can honestly say I'm surprised."

Sage smiled and Brynn felt a strangeness in her chest that was familiar, but she couldn't put her finger on. She sucked in some air, silently, and looked away. "It's nice to finally be the one to catch you off guard."

Brynn smirked, "I'm sure it is. So, Dr. C let you become one of us. That was nice of her."

"I wouldn't have thought so at first, if someone had told me this is what was going to happen to me. But, I have to say, it feels great."

"Icy," she offered, "we say things are _icy_ around here."

"I see."

She couldn't understand why Sage's transformation had been kept a secret from her for seven days. She supposed Dr. Cable had been trying to surprise her with this gift of a real partner, though she hadn't realized she was missing one.

"How about we go to the training room and I check out your moves."

Sage shrugged, "I'm sure you'll be irritated that I'm as good as I am, if I recall your disposition rightly."

Brynn laughed, "I remember how easy it was for me to learn to fight. I can only imagine that with your Smokey muscles, you were a natural." She squeezed his arm, where his bicep was bigger than ever, the muscles bulging attractively against his skin. He grinned at her when her nails didn't pierce his skin and hurt him, as they had before.

She felt a strange connection with Sage, as they fought. Neither could get a hit on the other, at first, but then, Sage managed to get behind her. He leaped up, latching himself onto her back and bringing his fingernails into her shoulder. She snarled and tried to dislodge him, but he held tight. With her flailing, Sage had to shift his weight. Brynn took advantage of his maneuver and flipped him over her, slamming him onto his back. She shoved her weight onto his arms, pinning him to the ground. She growled in his face, leaning down to put more pressure on him. Her face hovered above his, her sharp teeth gnashed together. He smiled up at her, his grin devilish. Then, his feet came up quickly and pushed at her shoulders until he had pushed her off of him. She didn't release his arms, though, and when she fell backward, he came rolling with her.

She let go after a moment and he tumbled away from her, so she couldn't strike while he was on the ground. They jumped up at the same time, narrowing their eyes and circling each other like wild animals. Brynn was impressed, they were well matched. They had the same style, which would be good when they were fighting together.

She leaped at him, but he expected her to fake left, and so he dove left to avoid her. She swiped at him, but just touched his hair. She spun around quickly and jumped for him again, hoping to catch him before he could set up for an attack. He was ready for her, though, and he kicked out, catching her foot in midair and knocking her off balance.

When she hit the floor, he was already there, on top of her, his arms cage bars on either side of her body. Her teeth clicked sharply in his face, but he just laughed. "Gotcha," he said, bringing his hand up to her throat. He didn't squeeze, but if he had and she was an Ugly, her breath would be stopped.

She pushed him off without menace and he let her. "Congratulations," she said.

He grinned at her, his sharp teeth catching the fluorescent light and seemingly gleaming. "Thanks. I bet you let me win."

Brynn raised an eyebrow, "forfeiting is for Randoms."

Speaking of Randoms, her mind strangely flashed to Zane. She found herself opening up a ping.

_Zane, I'm fine. I'm a Special now. Enjoy your Pretty life._

He immediately pinged back: _Glad to know you're okay. Too bad you're one of them. Enjoy your Special moments, they can't last forever._


	6. Chapter 6:Back to Boring

**Chapter Six: Back to Boring**

"I'm Tally Youngblood. Make me Pretty?" Brynn scoffed. "What kind of bullshit is that?"

Sage chuckled and ran a hand through Brynn's hair.

Dr. Cable also showed amusement. "I'm not complaining. She'll finally be a bubblehead and stop causing trouble."

"Are you sure? I mean, that's why we made Sage a Special."

"That's why _I_ made him a Special," the doctor corrected. "But Tally was only in The Smoke for a few days. Her memories were easy to block. Sage had been there for years, never mind his strange age, obstructing his memories would have been extremely difficult."

Brynn nodded and looked up at Sage from her resting spot on his shoulder. Over the last few days, they had gotten very close. Her pings with Zane had only shown her that that was the past. Besides, Sage offered her something she had never known with Zane. She didn't feel like she had to try. They were equals.

Sage was experiencing a decidedly uneventful Special life. He and Brynn went out on a few runs to catch Uglies trying to leave the city. It seemed that the Smokies, wherever they were hiding, were still trying to recruit the youth of the city. Brynn wondered where they thought they would put them, but it did tell her that they couldn't be far.

She recalled how quickly they had made it to the Old Smoke. Maybe they weren't that close, but they were still catchable. Very rarely, they caught a glimpse of a Smokey, but they were never able to capture one. It was beginning to put Brynn in a constantly irritated mood. The only thing that made her feel better was having Sage around.

So far, nothing romantic had happened between Sage and Brynn. When he thought about it, he didn't really care if there was a romance about them. He did want her, but he felt like a Random whenever he considered wooing her or taking her out on a date. That didn't seem very Special. It seemed ordinary.

He often touched her, stroking her hair or putting his fingers on her arm when he spoke with her. She never denied him and he took that as a sign that she was willing to be with him whenever he made his move.

Still, he was newly Special and that was enough to make him second guess himself. He didn't approach her on the subject and left their relationship the way it was—partners. Yes, they hung out. Yes, they laughed together. Yes, the sparred together. But so did all the other partnered Specials. Sage did notice that a lot of them seemed to be _involved_ with each other. But he also noticed a lot of that involvement was across the headquarters. It wasn't just partners who were seeing each other. This did nothing to settle his stomach about how to move in on Brynn.

Tally hadn't been Pretty very long when Brynn and Sage, along with quite a few other Specials, were sent out to a party she attending. A Smokey was at the party, dressed as a Special, and that was definitely a sign of trouble.

To Brynn's utter fury, the Smokey got away and they had no answers for why he had been there. But she knew it had something to do with Tally Youngblood, even though that stupid girl was bubbleheaded. It always had something to do with Tally Yoiungblood.


	7. Chapter 7: Making Progess

**Chapter 7: Making Progress**

They'd been tracking Tally non-stop for 24 hours. But she was a Pretty as ever. She hung out with Zane in the pleasure gardens, to Brynn's blood-boiling fury, and she laughed it up with Shay and all the other Crims. Brynn felt a small bitterness inside of her, something that nudged her, saying "that used to be your life. You were Tally once."

She hated that nudge. Sage made it a little better. He stayed with her at night and they talked and sparred and played games on their wall screens. But something was off between them. Brynn couldn't figure it out. She assumed it was that she was so intense about getting Tally Youngblood and bringing her down for good, and Sage didn't share her passion for the chase of the young girl.

That afternoon, Brynn was tracking Tally alone. Sage had stayed back at headquarters to eat and spend time with the other Specials. But Brynn promised Dr. Cable that she wouldn't let Tally leave her sight for a second. It was on this afternoon that Brynn was lurking in the tall grass of one of the pleasure gardens near Garbo Mansion. Her keen hearing made sure that when other Pretties were coming by, she could use her stealthy footing to evade them and still keep an eye on Tally. Tally, as it were, was busy making goo-goo eyes at Zane. Brynn could not figure out why this bothered her so much. It had to be her hatred for Tally and her thought that Zane had clearly lowered his standards since she'd become Special. She forced herself to watch every kiss, every caress, every cuddle. She wasn't feeling so icy by the time Tally stood and told her love that she was supposed to go spend time with Shay before a party that night. Brynn moved to follow her, keeping herself crouched low, and she began to move through the grass.

"How long have you been following us?" These words stopped Brynn in her tracks and she stood up straight without thinking about it. She looked through the long stems at Zane, whose eyes met hers with a ferocity she had not quite known in him. She remembered how kissing him used to make her bubbly. Were Tally's kisses that effective on him? Brynn felt herself swallow and her nails dug into her palms as her hands formed into fists.

"I'm not following _you_," she hissed.

He frowned at her, "you're not at all what I pictured you to be."

"What the hell does that mean?" she gnashed her teeth at him and swept her gaze toward Tally's retreating figure. She couldn't lose her.

"I thought…I just thought that you would be less like you. But I still see you, in that face." He took a step toward her, but Brynn didn't move. "I miss you, Brynn-la." He reached out for her and, to her shock, he touched her face.

She leaped backward with lightning speed. "What are you doing? You're trying to distract me so Tally can get away and cause trouble. You're up to something, _she's_ up to something."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Zane reached for her again and when his hand grasped her arm, she didn't pull back. "Brynn, please just talk to me for a minute."

"I _am_ talking to you. Unfortunately."

"Brynn-la," he whispered, his hand running up her arm and wrapping around the back of her neck. It felt so much like that night after the party where she'd shattered the ice sculpture, that she almost felt Pretty again. She saw him leaning forward, could feel his warm breath on her cheeks, rolling over her eyelashes. His blue eyes met her black ones and his soft, plush lips met her hard, thin ones. Suddenly, Brynn felt so icy that it burned her. Zane gasped as they separated and, without looking back, Brynn bolted after Tally Youngblood.

* * *

"You've been jittery all evening," Sage complained as Brynn removed herself from his arms and paced the room again. "Why don't you tell me what's going on?"

"Nothing is going on," Brynn insisted, not meeting his eyes. "I'm just feeling restless today."

"Did something happen when you were tracking Tally today?"

Brynn's head shot up and she met his gaze and, for a moment, she was convinced that he knew. "No," she managed after a beat of silence. But Sage wasn't stupid. He motioned for her to come sit beside him again, which she obliged.

He gently lowered her onto her back, her head falling into the pillows at the head of the bed. He came to rest beside her, their bodies just touching. "There, now don't you feel better?"

"No," she responded again.

He sighed and his body pressed against her. His arm came around her, resting along her waist and pulling her even closer to him. She turned onto her side, so that they were facing each other. "I wish you would talk to me, Brynn," he murmured.

"I don't know what to say. I know that's not very icy, but it's true. I haven't felt so confused since I was brain-damaged." Sage's hand brushed over back soothingly and she felt her body relax against it. She realized she'd closed her eyes and she looked up at Sage through her eyelashes. He had a strange look on his face. Suddenly, she found the words. "I spoke to Zane," she confessed. Something flashed in Sage's eyes and she almost stopped to ask what his problem was, but then she thought she might lose it, so she continued. "He's with Tally now, but somehow he knew I was there, watching them. He caught me off guard…he…"

There was a moment of silence where they just stared at each other. "He what?" Sage said, his voice sounded so sharp, yet so quiet. It raised goosebumps on Brynn's skin and she felt excited by it.

"He kissed me," it came out as a breath and found that she had to inhale heavily afterward. Sage's eyes flashed again and then he shifted. The sounds of his silver suit brushing against the sheets of her bed seemed so loud in their silence. But when he shifted she could feel the contours of his body pressed against hers and then, she knew…

He moved his head forward and she shut her eyes in anticipation. When his lips touched hers, Brynn felt like she was burning from the inside. He must have sensed this, because he wasted no time opening her lips with his own and kissing her so passionately that Brynn felt everything so clearly that she thought everything would shatter.

She moaned into his mouth as his kiss became more sensuous and she felt his erection pressing against her inner thigh. She couldn't remember what it had been like to be kissed by Zane, but she knew that it had been nothing like this. She couldn't remember what it had been like to look into his beautiful eyes and see the love and admiration there, but she knew that he had never looked as hungry and desirable as Sage did as they pulled apart enough to take a breath.

Suddenly, everything happened quickly. He unzipped her suit and shoved it off of her shoulders, rolling her over onto her back and bringing himself down over her. His teeth scraped the skin of her neck and shoulder and she made a pleased sound in the back of her throat. His sharp fingers ripped the suit away, but Brynn didn't feel any cooler. Sage's body was so hot against hers that she couldn't imagine ever being less than warm again. She wasn't sure how, but Sage's suit was also gone and they couldn't keep their hands, or mouths, off of each other.

After a long while of exploring each other, they found themselves inches away from going as far as they could. Sage looked down at his partner and she looked back up at him and the intensity between them was electric. Sage didn't have to ask, he slid into Brynn easily and she raked her nails across his back in response. They both moaned as he rocked against her.

Because it took so much for Specials to get tired, Brynn and Sage kept at it until well into the morning. Around four, Brynn was resting against his chest while still straddling him. "I don't suppose you'd want to sleep for a few hours before we have to go to New Pretty Town," Sage murmured into her hair, one of his hands resting on her hip and the other over her back.

"I don't **want** to," she said, shifting enough to tease him with her body against his. He groaned, but not in a disapproving way, "but I suppose we ought to." She rolled off of him, slowly, carefully to teasingly run her fingers over his hipbone. She settled with her back to him and he let himself gaze at the curve of her side for a moment before he cuddled up against her.

It wasn't until the moment that Sage settled against her that Brynn realized their bodies fit together like pieces of a puzzle.

* * *

_Brynn, Sage: get your asses to Valentino Mansion. Tally Youngblood is climbing the transmission tower._

Brynn awoke to this ping and was immediately on her feet. She could feel her muscles stretching after all their work the night before. "Sage," she said, her voice waking him up instantly, "we have to go. Tally Youngblood is finally going to get busted."

When they reached the top of the mansion, Tally was nowhere to be found. Brynn and Sage checked every crevice she could have been hiding in. Then, Blaize called, "hey, there's a door over here." Brynn hurried over and kicked in the door with all her force. They were met with the wide eyes of two New Pretties: Tally and Zane.

Brynn couldn't say she was surprised they were together. Zane looked Brynn right in the face, but Brynn didn't feel anything this time. Zane must have noticed this, because he faltered and looked at Sage. "We don't want to hurt you," Brynn said, stepping into the small room toward them, "but we will if we have to." She struck out and Zane hit the floor, unconscious.

She turned to Tally, who looked terrified. "Oh, I'm going to enjoy this," she grinned, her sharp teeth gleaming even in the dim light, and struck Tally down too.


	8. Chapter 8: Breakthrough

**Chapter 8: Breakthrough**

Nothing. Nothing but flash tattoos, fashionable 'tracking' cuffs, silly Ugly names, and bubbly, bumbling Pretties. Not just Pretties, either.

Crims.

"That could have been you," Sage spoke her thoughts, as he nestled against Brynn's shoulder as they crouched in the bushes, watching the Crims take the elevator up to the ice ring.

One month. A whole month and the specials had nothing. Brynn had been trying and trying to catch Tally doing _something _that she shouldn't be, but she was good. Very good. Somehow she always managed to slip through Brynn's fingers. They had learned how to silently speak to each other, and wrap their cuffs, so the Specials couldn't hear them. That's when Dr. Cable had sent Brynn and Sage to follow them whenever possible. Brynn knew Zane's body language, though she found that she didn't remember it as well as she used to. She didn't mention that to Dr. Cable, of course, lest she think another Special was better for the job.

The two of them couldn't get into the glass elevator with the Pretties. Not only did they know what Brynn and Sage looked like, they would be able to tell they were Specials. So, they had to make due with not hearing the conversation between them all. But Brynn could tell: this was it. This was the moment she'd been waiting for. The moment where Tally would expose herself. She could see the anxiety, the excitement in the set of everyone's shoulders. It made Brynn's body tense. Sage felt all mushy beside her. He was relaxed. He wasn't ready. She wanted to snap at him. But in the month since Tally's daring climb, Brynn and Sage had learned how to be together as well as Tally and Zane had. They had accepted each other's differences. They didn't have to talk to each other to know what was going on within the other.

It was impossible to see what was going on above the ice rink from here. Sage felt that it was unsafe to get close. That if Tally or Zane noticed either of them, whatever they were planning might be aborted. Brynn was willing to take that chance, but Sage kept her in place. For quite a while, it was entirely boring. Finally, Brynn leapt from her spot and went rushing toward the elevator. They had to be doing something up there.

"Brynn!" Sage called from her behind her. Just as he caught up and the elevator door opened, there was a terribly cracking sound and they both looked above. It took Brynn a moment to realize that chunks of ice and Pretties were falling toward her.

"What the hell?"

Suddenly, they were surrounded by giggling Crims and a few dazed Pretties.

"What the hell?" Brynn said again, looking around disbelievingly. "She did this."

"What?" Sage looked at her as though she were crazy. Brynn's heart was pumping and if she had a flash tattoo it would be swirling viciously, coursing faster than even these bubbly bimbos'.

"Tally Youngblood did this. I know it."

"Brynn, that's impos-"

Brynn was already twisting her own cuff, sleeker and thinner than Zane and Tally's manacle, but just as efficient. "Ping Dr. Cable," she told the interface. "_Tally Youngblood did this_."

* * *

Brynn leaped out of the hovercar as soon as Sage parked it in the dock. Dr. Cable had pinged her back immediately. _Get back to headquarters. Now._

When her and Sage walked through the doors into the meeting room on Level H, Dr. Cable had the feeds playing on the big wallscreen. There were about seven different feeds playing interviews for media purposes and another twenty of Pretties and Uglies raving about it. Brynn snarled at the wallscreen. "That little bitch."

"What a trick," Dr. Cable said, turning to face them. "How did they do it?"

Brynn stopped, her face growing blank.

Dr. Cable laughed, the sharpness of it taunting Brynn. "You don't know. Doze off? Too busy rolling in the pleasure gardens together?"

Sage looked away, at the wallscreen, though it was clear his focus wasn't on the flashing images.

"We couldn't get up on the rink. I was trying when they fell."

"Well, you were useless then." She turned back to the wallscreen, "every feed is either showing Tally's innocent, Pretty face, or they're talking about her. I didn't need you to tell me she was behind it, I could have figured that out for myself." Brynn opened her mouth to speak. Dr. Cable raised a hand to stop her. "I'm going to go see her tonight. They will surely celebrate. She has shown herself to be useful and suitable for Special Circumstances."

For a moment, Brynn and Sage stared blankly at her.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me."


End file.
